Google to buy Valve — Austin GDC 2008 Steaming away — WELL PLACED SOURCES tell us that Google is going to be buying Valve any second now. If you have to stop and think about why, you probably are not aware of Steam, Valve's amazing content distribution platform.

Popular Canon SD870 IS gets fresh — The most exciting thing about the new Canon PowerShot SD880 IS Digital ELPH camera is that it's an update to the really popular SD870 IS. However, that doesn't mean Canon didn't try to improve on its past success. — The new model features …

Tech Guru Riles the Industry By Seeking Huge Patent Fees — Millionaire Nathan Myhrvold, renowned in the computer industry as a Renaissance man, has a less lofty message for tech companies these days: Pay up. — Over the past few years, the former Microsoft Corp. executive has quietly amassed …

Peter Moore Interview: Part Three — Why Rare are a spent creative force... and other shocks from the Xbox backroom... Yesterday, we followed Moore from Dreamcast to Xbox 360. Today, there's more from the Microsoft years, including a damning indictment of UK developer, Rare.

Verizon Wireless Going Contract-Free? — According to an inside source, it looks like Verizon Wireless will be offering contract-free services as of September 21. Much like T-Mobile's FlexPay, the option will be available to those who pay full, unsubsidized prices for phones or for folks who want to bring in their own devices.

Google Launches Audio Indexing — As the Web becomes more sophisticated and audio and video becomes a more important part of our online lives, we need something that will help us sift through the junk and find what we're looking for in all that content. To address that, Google announced Wednesday …

Run Mac OS X on an Eee PC — Feel like stepping beyond the limits of Apple hardware? Want a Mac netbook for under $650? How about an EeePC running Mac OS X? — At least part of the appeal of the dimunitive EeePC netbook is its hackability — from Linux to Vista, intrepid hackers …

Adobe Creative Suite 4 details emerge — Adobe next week will unveil Creative Suite 4, a new version of its media design bundle set to ship the following month with features such as enhanced options for working with 3D objects in Photoshop, new Flash document exports from within InDesign …

Open set-top box ships — Neuros Technology has started shipping its second open set-top box, which targets both consumers and product companies. The high-definition capable “Open Source Device 2.0” (OSD 2.0) runs several open Linux stacks on a tiny TI Davinci-based CPU module delivered with a mini-ITX I/O board and enclosure.